Scenes From City Of Heavenly Fire
by HappinessShipper
Summary: Cassandra Clare has yet to release the final book to her #1 New York Times Bestselling Series, City of Heavenly Fire. Announced recently that the book will have 733 pages. Read "Scenes from City of Heavenly Fire" to see new perspectives on events and speculate what those 733 pages will contain.


Jace held Sebastian to the floor of the Institute Library, his knife already breaking pale skin. Blood dripped from his forehead onto the snow of Sebastian's hair. His golden eyes met the black ones of his demonic counterpart. The black eyes that held only bitterness and hatred, where the golden eyes held sorrow behind the same emotions for they had lived as friends of a sort for a short while and he saw in the white haired boy what he might have become had he not been sent to live with the Lightwoods. Clary knew that he couldn't see Sebastian as a human any longer, after watching the destruction he left in his wake.

"I gave your father the chance for last words, right before he killed me. It's a good thing you don't deserve last words."

"You couldn't kill me even if you wanted to, _brother_."

Clary stood, her _iratze_ starting to burn on her arm. "Jace. Wait. I want to speak to my brother one last time."

"I'm not sure—"

"Please," she said, "he's still human."

"You're too trusting, sister," he responded scornfully.

"As are you. At any moment, Jace could kill you. He has only one reason not to. You are not his brother. You are not his friend. You have done nothing but hurt him and it's in his best interest to end you like the monster you made yourself and end this, but he doesn't. Because he loves me and he trusts me, which are two things no one has ever done to you. Valentine was not a father to you, he was a guardian, a drill sergeant. He expected you to be a monster from the moment you were born and you have lived your entire life trying to prove that. You lived in the shadow of the soft angel boy and when you realized that you could never be him, you chose to prove _your_ title."

"Of course, I lived in his shadow," he said, his voice thick with emotion, "It's always been about him. Father would go on for hours about what he had done, little weak tasks I had already mastered. He never had the decency to tell me what he really meant, he loved another man's child more than his own, a monster. _I_ am his son. No matter how vile I may be, _I_ am his flesh and blood.

"I grew tired of trying for our father's attention; I knew I could never get it by striving to be weak and fragile like your beloved Jace, so I gave him exactly what he expected of me. I decided that one would be foolish to work to be good, so I turned my shoulder on your expectations of goodness."

"No one is all evil," she replied. "You just wanted to be loved. That's all you've ever wanted, but you don't know how to get it. It's an idea that has always been just outside your grasp. And don't say that you're a demon, that you don't need love; you're only part demon, as Jace is only part angel. You still could be good and kind if you wanted to be. You're still human. You still feel pain You still feel longing and more than anything else you want to be loved. Damn, you raised Lilith and tried to create a new race, so that they might love you.

"You're lost. You're just a boy, an orphan. Our own mother has hated and feared you since the moment you were born and for what? She could have loved you and nurtured you so that maybe you could fight the demon blood, but she didn't and that is her fault. Don't punish the entire world for the dumb choices of a new mother!

"You try to be a man, by killing and destroying and hating because that's what you saw a man to be, but what you didn't see is that being a man also means that you must love and protect others. You want to wallow in your own self-pity.

"You demand to be loved, yet you make yourself the most impossible to love, the most unworthy to be loved. You have only ever seen people push away others with killing and fear and only ever seen people want to stay when they are forced to be. You never saw real love until I came with you and Jace. I saw the look in your eyes when Jace and I were together. You were so desperate to be loved that you tried to force me to love you. You got into your head somewhere that love should be forced, but love just happens. It's not political, not about bloodlines. Sebastian, you can't make someone love you by trying to rape them—"

Jace's eyes widened and Sebastian moved in a flash, taking advantage of his moment of surprise, standing on the opposite end of the floor. Jace's knife was in her brother's hand, but it wasn't held defensively. The blade was held to his own chest, above his heart. From behind him, Clary saw Alec and Isabelle pull out their own weapons, but she shook her head; they remained at the doors.

"_La notte che le cose ci nasconde._"

Clary thought she would feel liberated by her brother's death, but she fell to her knees. Her brother, no matter how evil he was in life, had committed suicide before her eyes. She felt Jace drop to her side and cradle her into his arms, no longer consumed with heavenly fire, but she could not look away from the pale bloody corpse. She pulled out from the embrace and crawled to her brother's side. She knew she shouldn't grieve such a monster, but he wasn't a monster. He never was.

It was days later that Clary realized how fitting his last words were. Jonathan Morgenstern was raised is a night of fear and longed to fly amongst the stars, but fear masked the great distance that he created between himself and love. _The night that hides things from _us_._ Another work of Dante, whom Jace had quoted on the rooftop weeks ago, _L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle; The love that moves the sun and the other stars_. In a way, she thought that as the answer to her brother. The two Jonathans were night and day, but brothers at heart.


End file.
